Efficient elimination of environmental pollutants through sorption-reduction and photocatalytic degradation using nanomaterials

• Published in: Frontiers of chemical science and engineering Vol. 14; no. 6; pp. 1124 - 1135
• Main Authors: Alharbi, Njud S., Hu, Baowei, Hayat, Tasawar, Rabah, Samar Omar, Alsaedi, Ahmed, Zhuang, Li, Wang, Xiangke
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Beijing Higher Education Press 01-12-2020; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Aqueous solutions; Chemistry; Chemistry and Materials Science; Environmental management; Environmental protection; Functional groups; Heavy metals; Industrial Chemistry/Chemical Engineering; Industrial development; Metal ions; Nanomaterials; Nanotechnology; Organic chemicals; Organic chemistry; Photocatalysis; Photodegradation; Pollutants; Reduction (metal working); Review Article; Solidification; Sorption; Wastewater; sorption-reduction; nanomaterials; photocatalytic degradation; heavy metal ions; organic pollutants
• ISSN: 2095-0179; 2095-0187
• DOI: 10.1007/s11705-020-1923-z

With the rapid development of industrial, large amounts of different inorganic and organic pollutants are released into the natural environments. The efficient elimination of environmental pollutants, i.e., photocatalytic degradation of persistent organic pollutants into nontoxic organic/inorganic chemicals,
in-situ
solidification or sorption-reduction of heavy metal ions, is crucial to protect the environment. Nanomaterials with large surface area, active sites and abundant functional groups could form strong surface complexes with different kinds of pollutants and thereby could efficiently eliminate the pollutants from the aqueous solutions. In this review, we mainly focused on the recent works about the synthesis of nanomaterials and their applications in the efficient elimination of different organic and inorganic pollutants from wastewater and discussed the interaction mechanism from batch experimental results, the advanced spectroscopy techniques and theoretical calculations. The adsorption and the photocatalytic reduction of organic pollutants and the sorption/reduction of heavy metal ions are generally considered as the main methods to decrease the concentration of pollutants in the natural environment. This review highlights a new way for the real applications of novel nanomaterials in environmental pollution management, especially for the undergraduate students to understand the recent works in the elimination of different kinds of inorganic and organic chemicals in the natural environmental pollution management.